Gay marriage is right because it confers all the legal rights and privilages of marriage such as the right to file a joint tax return, entitlement to your spouce's Social Security benefits, etc. Civil Unions do NOT confer these rights and privilages. Therefore, Civil Unions are a mere shadow of the real deal.

it is RIGHT that we should give our gay people the same rights as our straight people. Otherwise what's to stop us from discriminating against everyone? What next? People with size 6 shoes can't get married? Being gay is a natural thing. Your sexuality is not something you choose, and to deny people the right to legally be united with the person they love is ridiculous.

when I was critically ill in the hospital 2 1/2 years ago..my partner of 20 years would never have been allowed into see me..the rule was 'no visitors'...we also have rights of inheritance...income tax equality..and this year we will be able to use pension income averaging (canada) to our advantage...our medical and dental plans cover us jointly...our home belongs to both of us..no one in our family can swoop in after 1 of us dies and claim everything....my partner has the right to decide to terminate my life if my situation is determined hopeless or my quality of life is less than we have discussed, and vice-versa....there are many many things that straight people take for granted..i can't even begin to list them all here

Legalizing gay marriage would give couples a way to share their lives with each other. They could own property together and have protection under the law if the relationship dissolves or if one partner dies. They would also have rights to make medical decisions for their partners in case of emergency. Children would also be protected in case of a break up or death. I really can't see any reason not to allow gay couples to join their lives just like any other couple.

To not allow them to marry is plain out discrimination based on sexual oritatation and that's suppost to be illegal. And all the arguments against it are a joke. It will not ruin the community or take away the sanctity of marrige. If any thing it strenghtens the community by bring more stability to it. And it upholds the sanctity of marrige being about love and commentment for your partner. What alot of people don't want to realize is that by denying gays the right to marriage they are actually hurting socity and noy just gays. Because of the denial of being able to put a domestic partner same sex or otherwise on a health care policy exists many more people who could be covered aren't. And the community has to pick up the tab for that. Also when one partner dies they lose rights to the very things they helped acrue like property and life insurance policy's plus Social Security benifits. Because of this many surving partners end up on welfare or homeless. And the children of these couples are hurt as well. If there's a separation or death one parent could loose all rights to a child they helped raise. And we all know how bad that hurts the child. And then there is a loss of protection for domestic violence and the stiffer penalties that come with it.
How do I know this? I am a straight woman who never had the chance to marry her partner before he died. The very law enacted to stop gay marriage in the State of Ohio has hurt my family greatly. Since I was not legally married to him I am not eliagable for any benifits throught the VA, his job, ot the government and had to go on welfare. He died without a will and the only thing that saved me and my two sons was that he made his brother promise that I would be treated as his wife if he passed. If his brother was not a man of honour I could have lost everything we worked so hard for in the blink of an eye just like I lost him.

Whether or not it ever is legalized, no one can take what I've got away from me with mere words. It is a marriage of two and that doesn't include legislators passing judgement in order for me to feel validated.

How about it's conformation with this statement:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

i am from a state where most people are very against homosexuality, and it's refreshing to get on here and see so many people support equal rights for all people. at this moment, i am proud to be apart of this online community of people.

Marriage should be about love. With the current divorce rate and the number of loveless marriages there are out there, I think that two people who are in love, regardless of gender, creed, or race, should have the right to marry.
Plus, Julia Roberts married Lyle Lovett. Just putting that out there to think on.

NOTHING if it is actually called "marriage". Marriage is a union between one man and one woman.
What is right about "domestic partnerships" is that they provide stability for committed partners in important legal and personal matters, while still preserving the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.

I defer to Anna Quindlen's outstanding column, entitled, "The Same People" in the June 9, 2008, issue of Newsweek magazine. She writes:
"The Same People"
Header: "Scream, shout, jump up and down. No matter. The gay-marriage issue is over and done with. The upshot: love won."
"During his sophomore year in high school, one of our sons mentioned at the dinner table that a classmate had come out of the closet. I can't even remember which of the two boys it was, and that's not only because my memory is now so bad that I can reread mystery novels and not recall whodunit. It's because the announcement was such a big nothing among the kids that it was only slightly more noteworthy than "pass the mac and cheese." Unlike my own high-school friends, these kids took gay for granted.
One of the most transformative social movements over our lifetime has been the battle for gay rights, and the key to its great success has been the grass-roots phenomenon of exploding stereotypes by simply saying, "Yes, I am." Each time the woman at the next desk or the guy down the street lets it be known that he or she is gay, it takes another brick out of the wall of division. Or, as Ellen DeGeneres told John McCain on her show recently, "We are all the same people, all of us."
That's what the California Supreme Court said when it ruled that gay couples should have the right to marry as a matter of basic equality. Before you could say "Jonathan and Andrew request the honour of your presence," opponents were suggesting that civilization would crash and burn if two guys could register at Pottery Barn and raise kids in a ranch house. All those wailing that gay marriage is an invention of amoral modernism might want to consider these lines from a Roman poem of the second century A.D.:
"The bearded Callistratus married the rugged Afer/Under the same law by which a woman takes a husband./Torches were carried before him, a bridal veil covered his face." And afterward everyone sat down to salmon, rice pilaf and chocolate mousse. Well, actually, I made up that last part just as surely as some people are making up the dire consequences of same-sex troth-plighting.
In the wake of the court's decision, those folks vowed to find a way to protect the sanctity of hetero marriage, that time-honored staple of sitcom mockery and savage custody fights. Polls showing opposition to gay marriage were proffered to prove that the court had overstepped its bounds, ignoring the fact that the most sacred business of judges is not to ratify the will of the majority but to protect the minority from its tyranny.
It is true that the California Supreme Court is something of a Scandinavia of jurisprudence, willing to get out front on social issues. But it's not really courts and legislatures that will settle this issue. It's the neighbors, friends and family members who have come out and made the political personal—and lovable. Jennifer? Smart, funny Jennifer? Of course she should be able to marry Anne. They're perfect together.
If only coming out could be used in other areas that remain unsettled and contentious. The stereotype of the feckless woman who has an abortion and then a pedicure is a sub rosa staple of the opposition, and there's no question that it could be counteracted by real people talking about making a difficult but necessary choice. But since abortion has always been couched, quite properly, as an issue of personal privacy, that feels discordant. Immigrants face bigotry that grows directly out of the swamp of ignorance, but the impulse—and the pressure—to fit in means that they don't often testify to where they come from and what their lives are really like.
Gay men and lesbians have prospered because they've refused to acquiesce to the notion that they should hide their lives from public view. Two by two they've adopted children, bought homes, volunteered in their communities and slogged through life together just the way hetero couples do, except without preferential tax codes, inheritance rights and the automatic assumption that they can make decisions for one another in emergency situations. Too often, without legal protection, they have found themselves dependent on the kindness of those who were not kind, like the man in Indiana who became severely disabled and whose parents prohibited his partner of 25 years from visiting him in their home.
Here's what I don't understand: is there so much love and commitment in the world that we can afford, as a society, to be contemptuous of some portion of it? If two women in white want to join hands in front of their families and friends and vow to love and honor one another until they die, the only reasonable response to that is happy tears, awed admiration and societal approval. And—this part is just personal opinion—one of those big honking KitchenAid mixers with the dough hook.
Before we know it that will be the response everywhere, not just in Denmark and the Netherlands and Canada and California: approval, appliances. The polls predict the future. The younger you are, the more likely you are to know someone who is gay. The more likely you are to know someone who is gay, the more likely you are to support gay marriage. The opposition is aging out.
Someday soon the fracas surrounding all this will seem like a historical artifact, like the notion that women were once prohibited from voting and a black individual from marrying a white one. Our children will attend the marriages of their friends, will chatter about whether they will last, will whisper to one another, "Love him, don't like him so much." The California Supreme Court called gay marriage a "basic civil right." In hindsight, it will merely be called ordinary life."
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/139423
~~~~~~~~~~
On a personal note, people so adamantly opposed to gay marriage might give some thought to the question,
"...is there so much love and commitment in the world that we can afford, as a society, to be contemptuous of some portion of it?"

everything, i think i deserve to be married just as much as the next. I have been in a devoted loving relationship for 7 years. We have raised our child together. He is a great child, we pay taxes and do everything like regualar straight people. I don't see the problem.

Most marriages today are civil contracts. Some are embellished by a church and some ceremonies.
It is right that two people can choose to make a contractual commitment, one to the other. It is right that "partner benefits" should accrue to a couple who enter into such a contract.
Can you imagine being excluded form hospital visits to your life partner because you are 'not married'?
Those who campaign for formalising gay relationships seem to have chosen a word that challenges dogmatic people - Marriage.

I think it's stupid how it's illegal in most states because love shouldnt depend on your gender, juss how people say it shouldnt depend on age.
Love has no boundaries.
They should have their right as a couple juss like everyone else in the world.
Am I right or am i right?
;)

I believe that marriage should be through your church (if you have one) but a civil union needs to be devoid of religious connotations. Being married is between you and your God only. I'd argue that you would also have to be joined into a civil union in addition to marriage (this gets me a lot of bad feedback from other Christians), and by the way, enter into a civil union with any human you want to. Leave the marriage and the sight of God stuff to your minister.

Along with most of the actual good things people are saying here:
It's breaking down the same barriers that we have been breaking down regarding everything else for centuries.
No, just because you look different or have a different mental state than everyone else, doesn't mean your a witch/possessed by the devil.
No, just because you are Jewish doesn't mean you are a lesser race.
No, just because you are black doesn't mean you should be a slave to a white man.
No, just because you are a woman doesn't mean you are dumber than men and should get paid less.
No, just because I am gay doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to openly express love for my partner, just as straight people do.

Nothing is RIGHT. Neither side is going to give up so there will be no "right," as a unanimous idea. I've got a few ideas of my own, but no one wants to hear them, because no one wants to come to a common ground on this... They all want their way, and don't realize their way is never gonna happen without first some give.

Nothing. It is a sin in the eyes of GOD and that is what counts. That is who people technically marry themselves to in Christian marriages. Civil marriages are grand because you are not proclaiming yourself to HIM. Do not disgrace HIS name by saying you live a holy life when you are breaking one of THE LORD'S rules. Get married civily!!! Dont cause shame on the rest of us people who live by HIS teachings.

Marriage defined by law and the Bible between a man and a woman. Gay marraige should not be legal and I feel it is not right. I have no problems with anyone or thier lifestyle,however marriage is for a man and a woman. There can be other legal rights given to gay couples,marriage is not one of them

First let's recognize there is several kinds of marriage...there is a civil union, a church endorsed or sanctioned union, Common law marraige, ( in some states ), and various religious or cultural unions which arent officially recognised by the law, ( US Law ).
My wife and I were married in a civil union in the state of Nevada - this is a non religious type of wedding sponsored by the state - I feel this type of union is a civil right for all couples who meet the qualifications which are few, ( marriage license, proper identification, birth certificate, etc.,).
A "civil union", has nothing to do with religion - it's a contract between two people that has been authorised by the state - now a state is required to respect and protect the rights of its citizens, and if a homosexual person is allowed to some legal rights in a state, ( own property, vote, hold political office, drive an automobile - and of course pay taxes ,), then that person should be entitled to ALL LEGAL RIGHTS enjoyed by other citizens.
A state by law cannot discriminate against people on the basis of sex when it's a civil contract between two people who have meet the states obligations for identification and have paid the proper fees...to do this is a willfull disreguard of their rights as citizens of this country.
Now I could care less about what individual churches do with their "religious wedding service" qualifications - that's a matter for their own members to decide - but by state laws - in respecting the rights of all it's citizens, the states have no choice but to respect the desires of every couple who wishes to join in a civil union.

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